Frost-chilled days give way to colder nights, but the warmth of Snowdown calls together kindred spirits and foes alike. Snow Day Singed, Snowstorm Sivir and Winter Wonder Lulu have suited up in their Snowdown finest, joining the celebration along with all of the former Snowdown skins returning to cavort in the cold:

Snow Bunny Nidalee

Workshop Nunu

Happy Elf Teemo

Earnest Elf Tristana

Old Saint Zilean

Re-Gifted Amumu

Santa Gragas

Reindeer Kogâ€™Maw

Candy Cane Miss Fortune

Ragdoll Poppy

Nutcracko

Silent Night Sona

Festive Maokai

Bad Santa Veigar

Mistletoe LeBlanc

Snow Day Ziggs

Dark Candy Fiddlesticks

Toy Soldier Gangplank

Snowmerdinger

Slay Belle Katarina

But it wouldnâ€™t be Snowdown without a showdown! This Snowdown, weâ€™re excited to introduce the ShowdownÂ featured game modeÂ on Howling Abyss. Featuring 1v1 and 2v2 battles to test how well you wield your weapons in the winter chill, you can enter Showdown throughout Snowdown this year!

Returning Snowdown ward skins, plus a new addition to the ward skin line up, will light the way to the festivities with some surprises in store for mystery gifting, new skins and new icon rewards to earn. Check back withÂ leagueoflegends.comÂ for more information about the event and weâ€™ll see you on the battlefields!

The spotlights are on, the musicians are at the ready and the Spirit Rush is on. Popstar Ahri announces her presence, shooting a pulsing blue Spirit Orb across the stage. The notes surge from the speakers and seem to take on a life of their own around the pop darling. The crowd rushes the stage and Popstar Ahri charms the crowd with a night of song and dance.

No, not that one. Are games becoming more passive with less opportunities to shut down the opponent?

Where do you want snowballing to be at for it to feel like a fun mechanic?

Zileas: Ideally, we want teams to snowball less… and individuals to snowball as much or more — which is to say, reward individual skill specifically. Individual snowballing is fun, team snowballing is not. If we saw patterns contrary to this, we’d make adjustments.

Are you okay with games lasting 30 to 40 minutes?

Zileas: We like games to be in the 30-40 range. We don’t want them to be longer than before. If they are becoming significantly longer, we’d make an adjustment.

Doesn’t this length mean hypercarries like Nasus or Vayne can never truly be shut down?

Zileas: There’s nothing wrong with late game comps as a strategy that is sometimes played. What we don’t want is for long games to be the standard.

Will Riot focus on rewarding individual skill more?

Zileas: Making the game reward individual skill was actually the point of these changes. When they are finished and balanced I think that will become clear to everyone. Our players are becoming more serious about competition and the game over time, and our intent with the game is to not ‘casualize’ but instead to continue to improve the overall quality of competitive play.

We will from time to time add stuff like ARAM and One for All, but those sorts of experiences can thrive alongside the core game without damaging competitive integrity.

Why do you feel team snowball is less fun than individual such?

Zileas: This is a pretty theoretical game design argument, but bear with me.

The game result of ‘win or lose’ comes from some set of things. They have to add up to a 100% control of the outcome. Lots of things go in — team chemistry, counter-picks at champion select, mastery and rune choices, whether or not a champion is currently strong (or not), individual skill, good calls on team objectives, and so forth.

We believed that in season 3, early game kills snowballed the game but were not really super ‘skillful’ compared to other factors in the game. We also thought that a few good early plays on towers could sometimes secure the game — and a few actions in isolation will be more random than consistent play. So, we decided to reduce the importance of certain early game actions that will tend to snowball teams (Tower kills, dragons, first bloods in the jungle fed to a ‘snowballey’ lane — which is honestly a somewhat random, not as much skill-oriented result). From this, we expect that the importance of everything else to go up… because it has to add up to 100%, and we just subtracted something out.

So, by reducing team snowball early game, you must be increasing the importance of individual skill (along with other stuff).

Additionally, the gold changes we made should make it more possible for a support or jungle player to be the star player of their team.

An analogy I’d make is — would the game have more or less skill if we flipped a coin at the beginning of the game and gave 500 gp to the winning team? Obviously, that would still be ‘balanced’ but would be a less skillful game. By cleaning out stuff that over-rewarded relative to the difficulty of doing it, we improve the relative rewards afforded to the things we all agree are important. Also, by making the game tend to reward consistent actions over a period of time, we will tend to favor the more skillful player.

Wasn’t first blood due to a level 1 invade an example of skillful play?

Zileas: It IS a skillful play. It’s not a coin flip. However, it was over-rewarded relative to other skillful play that occurred in games. It would be sortof like if you made the first shot made in basketball be worth 10 points instead of 2 — still skill-based, but will tend to cause more random outcomes and reward the better team with a win less frequently. This has the same net affect on the frequency with which ‘the best team wins’ as adding a small coin flip test.

Does that make sense? By bringing this back in potency a bit, we preserve the potential for people to utilize the skill that DOES exist there without washing out other skillful actions… Bringing them into balance essentially.

Conclusion: Goals for Preseason

Morello: We only really want anti-XP snowball in the long-term. We’re watching this on the team-snowball level (team snowballing not good, personal is) but you need the ability to get an advantage that closes a game.

Average game time is up a bit – this is something we worry about too. I doubt everything is “right” in the world on this, but we need to dig into specific causes after today’s hotfix.

Single Posts

Morello: So far, we have not seen this be true. Some data we have so far:

* Traditional support characters’ winrate is almost unchanged. (Less than 1% delta up or down)
* Other common duo-laners (Annie, Zyra) are unchanged in winrate. Relatively, their winrate is similar to before…meaning this delta is not changing that equation so far (though some changes may be needed as they might have been in S3).
* The two exceptions are Taric (up ~4%) due to new scaling being really strong on him, and Janna (down ~5%) due to global passive change. We’ll likely buff Janna’s core skills a good amount to compensate (woo!)

This is only a few days of data, but right now, the gold delta has had a low effect on general performance (and in this stuff, deltas matter more than absolutes). We do have some hotfix changes to Brace and Jungle coming in today, but supports and bottom lane are actually looking generally more healthy so far based data points.

Ransom: That’s the beautiful thing about the circumstances Yasuo and Riven find them in. The relationship could go any number of directions. It could be a pure rivalry, or it could be a rivalry that turns into a romance, or it could go somewhere else entirely. But to call it a pure rivalry or a pure romance is missing the point. The point is, the relationship is COMPLICATED and provides plenty of fodder for drama. As a fan of our universe, this ambiguity appeals to me. It’s a grown-up vision of human relationships and not a Disney one.

If cast during Sweeping Blade or Last Breath, Steel Tempest and Empowered Steel Tempest become a point-blank area of effect instead of a linear skill shot. The damage can critically strike and on-hit effects are applied to all enemies damaged. The cooldown of Steel Tempest is unaffected by cooldown reduction and is instead reduced based on his bonus attack speed. The casting time/missile speed is also reduced based on Yasuo’s bonus attack speed.

Empowered Steel Tempest (Q + 2 Stacks of Gathering Storm)

Range: 900

Yasuo brandishes his sword and causes a whirlwind to tear forward instead, dealing the same damage to all enemies in a line and knocking them airborne.

Yasuo dashes to a nearby airborne enemy champion, dealing 200 / 300 / 400 (+150% Total AD) physical damage and holding all airborne enemies in the air for an additional 1 second. Once he lands, Yasuo gains 50% armor penetration for 15 seconds that only affects his target’s bonus armor.

Casting Last Breath will consume active stacks of Gathering Storm.

In-game Preview

Lore

“Yasuo is a man of resolve, an agile swordsman who wields the wind itself to cut down his foes. This once-proud warrior has been disgraced by a false accusation and forced into a desperate fight for survival. With the world turned against him, he will do everything in his power to bring the guilty to justice and restore his honor.

Formerly a brilliant pupil at a renowned Ionian sword school, Yasuo was the only student in a generation to master the legendary wind technique. Many believed he was destined to become a great hero. However, his fate was changed forever when Noxus invaded. Yasuo was charged with guarding an Ionian Elder, but, foolishly believing his blade alone could make the difference, left his post to join the fray. By the time he returned, the Elder had been slain.

Disgraced, Yasuo willingly turned himself in, prepared to pay for his failure with his life. He was shocked, however, to find himself accused not just of dereliction, but of the murder itself. Though confused and racked with guilt, he knew the assassin would go unpunished if he did not act. Yasuo raised his sword against the school and fought his way free, knowing his treason would turn all of Ionia against him. Left truly alone for the first time in his life, he set out to find the Elder’s real killer.

Yasuo spent the next several years wandering the land, seeking any clue that might lead him to the murderer. All the while, he was relentlessly hunted by his former allies, continually forced to fight or die. His mission drove him ever forward, until he was tracked down by the one foe he dreaded most – his own brother, Yone.

Bound by a common code of honor, the two warriors bowed and drew their swords. Silently they circled one another under the moonlight. When they finally charged forward, Yone was no match for Yasuo; with a single flash of steel he cut his brother down. Yasuo dropped his weapon and rushed to Yone’s side.

Overcome with emotion, he demanded to know how his own kin could think him guilty. Yone spoke: ”The Elder was killed by a wind technique. Who else could it be?” Understanding swept over Yasuo as he suddenly realized why he had been accused. He professed his innocence once more and begged his brother’s forgiveness. Tears streamed down Yasuo’s face as his brother passed in his arms.

Yasuo buried Yone under the rising sun, but could take no time to mourn. Others would be after him before long. His brother’s revelation had given Yasuo newfound purpose; he now had the clue that would lead to the true killer. Swearing an oath, he gathered his belongings and, with one last look at Yone’s grave, set out with the wind at his back.

I’m so glad you’ve all been enjoying the preseason. As we mentioned, we fully expected our changes to dramatically shake up the League of Legends you’ve known for so long. We’re really happy to see people questioning the fundamental preconceptions they’ve held about league for so long.

That said, we’ve heard your concerns and we’re going to nudge down the Relic Shield lines to free up some more breathing room for experimentation.

Goals:

Balance Relic Shield to match Spellthief and Ancient Coin incomes

Reduce the early game sustain of Relic Shield

Focus Relic Shield’s value on melee champions

Reduce the midgame pushing power of Targon’s Brace

Specific Changes:

Relic Shield’s execute will not proc on ranged attacks

Relic Shield’s charge rate will be reduced by 50%.

Brace of Targon’s max charges will be reduced to 3.

We’re not removing the doubling up on Relic Shield yet, because we feel that once we’ve nerfed the frequency, we’re hitting both the sustain and income rate for weakly investing in the item. That should let us clear away the early-game smoke and evaluate the impact of 2:1:2 on the game.

How does the income generation really work?

Every X seconds, you gain the ability to share the kill value of a minion with an ally with a small bonus.

This can effectively be calculated as GP/5:

30 sec cooldown -> 16 gold minion ~= 5 gp / 10

As so many players have noted, Ancient Coin and Spellthief’s Edge give smaller amounts than this. So our first step is to reduce Relic Shield’s income to put it on parity with the other items. The initial item is just too powerful for its cost, because it has a level 2 income stream on a cheaper item.

Now, let’s talk about stacking. When you stack, you give 5 gp / 30 or 1 gp / 10 to your ally. This value might be too high and I’m personally keeping an eye on it. However, keep in mindÂ most of the gold you share is still gold your lane mate could have CS’d themselves.

We also want to reward coordination and skill expression – so we’re OK with the fact that if you execute the Cannon minion, you get more than the baseline cash. This is similar to how you can get extra gold from the Frostfang line if you stack auto attacks *and* spells when you harass.

Focusing its identity

Finally, we’re changing the execute proc so it only triggers on melee attacks. This is because we feel good about about Relic Shield and Brace of Targon create for characters who have to place themselves into danger to last hit. This should also reduce the pushing potential of a lane with ranged characters. We feel safer about melee champions having this pushing power because once they are under tower, their ability to harass the opponent is dramatically riskier.

That said, we will be keeping an eye on the evolving nature of the game and want you guys to continue experimenting with the preseason changes. Once we have the Relic Shield nerfs fully tested and vetted, we’ll bring them to you guys.

Jungle vs 2:1:2

We like that players are experimenting with the game. However, we want to make sure that whatever meta changes occur have clear trade-offs. Once Relic Shield is adjusted, we’ll continue comparing jungler and non-jungler comps and make sure that there’s a clear reason for doing them. Jungle should bring a distinct, clear advantage and risks, just as 2:1:2 brings its own advantage and risks.

Again, thanks for working with us to understand the preseason.Â

How will Relic Shield be used on ranged characters?

Â Xelnath:Â If you want to proc the Spoils of War effect, you will need to CS normally or use a spell to kill a minion.

Will you fix the bug with killing Zac’s blobs with a Relic shield? (grants more than double gold for assists)

Â Xelnath:Â This is being packaged into a “soon” hotfixÂ

Will this fix pose a problem for Thresh?

Â Xelnath:Â We’ll keep an eye on thresh, but thresh has his E build-up which means he has better-than-average last hitting capabilities.

Is that still correct or am I missing something?

Are you trying to make jungling optional in Season 4?

Â Xelnath:Â I am a jungle main. I don’t intend to allow junglers to disappear. A cursory analysis has shown that you get substantially more XP in jungle than sharing a top lane. Similarly, you get very competitive gold and very strong map pressure which forces lanes to play a certain way.

I’m not sure that 2:1:2 is as strong as people perceive it to be. This implies that players may be enjoying this because its new, novel or perhaps has some strengths that we don’t clearly understand. Thus, it warrants further analysis, not brutal murder.

What effect will these changes have on bot lane?

Â Xelnath:Â Once we take away the execute proc from ranged marksman, I think it will get bot lane back where it should be. I’m OK with the idea that your support can support you by last hitting once in a while tho.

Single Posts

First, I want to thank you for the great feedback on One for All! We’re all really excited about finally getting this out to you, and we’re glad that you’re enjoying it.

I’d like to take a bit of time to talk through some feedback we’ve received about having the One for All queue on Summoner’s Rift as opposed to Howling Abyss. One of the initial goals we had while first developing One for All was to fulfill the fantasy of having five of one champion fight five of another. Who would win in a match between 5 Ezreals against 5 Dravens? As such, we decided to explore Summoner’s Rift as the battlefield for these clone combats. We felt that having multiple lanes and secondary objectives opens up a lot more opportunities for teams to create strategies while behind, a scenario that could commonly happen if the champion you picked was not as strong in lane as your opponents’.

While the game is definitely paced differently on Howling Abyss and has lots of positives, we found the asymmetrical champion selection to be potentially more punishing on Howling Abyss than it is on Summoner’s Rift. We felt the lack of objectives on Howling Abyss resulted in players having fewer options when they’re up against a team composition that was unbeatable in team fights – with only a single lane and no fountain healing, the actions available to your team felt limited, and were further exacerbated if the champion matchup was uneven.

That’s not to say that poor matchups don’t happen on Summoner’s Rift as well, but we found that the additional objectives gave teams more of a fighting chance, even when their chosen champion was losing (all of?) their lanes. Maybe the traditional laning paradigm isn’t the best one to use against a team of 5 Yoricks – on SR, your team has the ability to pivot on this and try something different. Triple mid? Give it a shot, you might be surprised! Double jungle? Not a bad thing to try against that pesky 5 Soraka team. There are a lot of strategies to explore on Summoner’s Rift – I wouldn’t expect the established Summoner’s Rift meta to work on One for All, and would encourage you and your teammates to be inventive and come up with a new strategy that really suits your particular champion!

That said, remember that you can still play One for All on any map through custom games right now. We heard your early feedback and made sure that this was an experience you could still enjoy once the game mode went live through the new featured custom game flow. Though it differs from the 5X vs. 5Y theme we were hoping to hit with this release, there’s definitely a lot of merit in having 10-man mirror matches. I would posit that these mirror matches would actually be more fun on Howling Abyss than they would be on Summoner’s Rift – we definitely think that this tenfold Murderbridge variant of One for All is a mode worth exploring, and have already started planning for having this be its own featured game mode in the coming year.

Given that, I hope you’ll continue to try new and crazy strategies on One for All on SR! Please continue to give feedback on these featured game modes – we love hearing from players and your input is an important part of the iteration process! =)

Â Zileas:Â I agree that we need to keep our eyes on this sort of thing. We certainly would like to tune it to be more and more fun in any future iterations. If we came to believe that Soraka is as OP or frustrating as Karthus or Teemo were, we would certainly ban her out at some point. I know the team is monitoring all of this closely. In the meanwhile, I’d recommend running executioner’s calling vs this — it works pretty well.

That being said, mode is not supposed to be the pinnacle of competitive gaming, it’s supposed to be fun. Some match-ups, much like aram match-ups, are a little one-sided, and balancing them all is just not feisable — but we think the mode is a good fun for a bit nonetheless.